SOURCE: "Vorticist Performance and Aesthetic Turbulence in Enemy of the Stars," in PMLA, Vol. 107, No. 3, May, 1992, pp. 482-96.

In the following essay, Graver provides an analysis of Lewis's play Enemy of the Stars.

Lewis and Ezra Pound coined the concept "vorticism" to identify the artistic trend that includes Enemy of the Stars, but the existing studies of this movement do not go very far in explaining the play's complexities. Hugh Kenner and Timothy Materer study the notion of the Vortex in detail, but neither examines closely the formal affinities between Enemy of the Stars and the avant-garde movement sweeping around it. William Wees, in contrast, claims that Lewis's play is "the pice de resistance of literary Vorticism" and notes some important affinities the play has with Lewis's paintings and theoretical writings, but Wees is reluctant to examine its intricacies in their own right … Other studies of the play...